It’s not often that I paste a short video of me playing a game into the PC Gamer work, Slack and other writers immediately buy it on Steam. But all it took was a 90-second clip of me trying to play out Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in a trombone-based rhythm game. Trombone Champion and several copies of the game were sold. Like, right away.
You can see the clip in the gif above, as long as you promise to turn the sound up as high as possible. Yes, my performance was horrible and if Beethoven didn’t turn in his grave it was only because he had already burst out, ran around screaming and then threw up. But in Trombone Champ playing bad trombone is just as much fun as playing good, and that’s just one reason I love it so much.
In fact, since I first tried Trombone Champ this morning – and this is no joke – it has become a serious contender for Game of the Year for me. It’s a blast. Or rather, it’s a dessert.
Trombone Champ works just like other music rhythm games: notes move from right to left across the screen, and you move the mouse up and down to meet them and click or press a keyboard key to play the note. Accuracy and timing determine how well you play, with little words telling you how you’re doing. Words like Perfecto! Or nice! If you suck like I usually do you get a Meh or sometimes a Annoying, which is perhaps the funniest word to describe someone who plays the trombone badly. I doubt many music teachers use it, but maybe they should.
You get a number at the end of each track (there are 20 in total, with a plan to add more to the road map), and each time you play a song you earn Toots, which can be spent on Sacks, which contain Tromboner cards. At first I assumed these cards were just a joke. Some cards feature famous trombonists and musicians and include facts about how many hot dogs they could eat in one sitting, while other cards feature things like baboons or a trumpet (beautifully described as “the coward’s trombone”).
But these cards ultimately have a function, a function I accidentally stumbled upon by clicking on something that maybe shouldn’t be clicked. Did I summon a demon in Trombone Champ? I may have summoned a demon in Trombone Champ. Look, I’m not going to explain the whole thing because Trombone Champ is much more than just honking notes on a beat. There is also… lore.
Before you even start on your first trombone, you’ll realize there’s more to it, as an introductory cutscene describes ancient trombone prophecies in a way befitting The Lord of the Rings. A flame ignites in the dark. A shadowy trombone begins to spin slowly. Baboons are called. It won’t be the last time baboons are mentioned either.
I won’t summarize it all, but as you play you will discover:
- New trombones
- More new trombones
- Music not usually intended for trombones
- Fascinating trombone lore
- Making collectible cards and cards
- hotdogs
- baboons
- A song about baboons
- Baboon facts
- Baboon Secrets!
- Non-baboon secrets
- A ‘baboon quantity’ option in the settings menu
- Possibly that demon I mentioned
And then there’s the act of skillfully playing fast songs on a damn trombone, which is really tricky and, like I said, great fun no matter how bad or successful you end up playing. (Luckily, I’d describe the score as almost criminally generous, so even an absolutely awful rendition won’t be judged too harshly.) I’ve had a lot of laughs playing Trombone Champ, more than I’ve done with any game in a long time . Some of the humor just comes naturally from missing a note with a trombone in a song like Also Sprach Zarathustra or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
But there’s also the game itself, which puts jokes on the screen while you’re playing, like during The Star-Spangled Banner. First, an American flag flies proudly in the background as the fireworks set off to the beat of the bills, then the scene changes to a pile of cash and then, finally, a huge greasy hamburger. And during the baboon song – there’s a baboon song – pictures of different baboons pop up as you honk at the lyrics, which usually consist of the word “baboon.” It’s a hilarious game. (And a great song.)
And as funny as it is, Trombone Champ is no joke. The songs are almost all blazingly fast (you can slow them down a bit in the settings) and the notes come at you blazingly fast, so much, and they go on for quite a while. How tall is Hava Nagila? Much, much longer than you remembered, especially when you play it on a trombone.
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